Aegri Somnia
by In Paradisum
Summary: lit. A sick man's dreams. - Because he is one thousand and twenty seven years old, chronologically, and there are some hurts that remain impossibly fresh when they shouldn't. Lightning Returns. Gently implied HxN.


_hey readers!_

_wanted to take a quick break from aeonis infinitus for a bit and write something LR because, y'know, I actually haven't yet, much to my shame. So then this happened! It might be a little wonky since I typed and published this entire thing on my phone, but we'll see how it goes, yes?_

_disclaimer: none of this is mine except for the words, yadda yadda, no monetary profit blah blah blah on with the show!_

_enjoy!_

* * *

_aegri somnia_

* * *

He spends the first one hundred years in Luxerion. Watches a city grow from a seed and flourish into a carnivorous plant, one that eats an immortal mankind alive and picks its teeth with their bones. Sees the way the people twist into mockeries of what humans once were, what humanity promised to be. Witnesses their anger as they turn on the parent that orphaned them, and claim her archnemesis in her stead.

He watches in secret. Knows from history what a new society will do to remnants of the old, its framework and its government. But it's really not the Academy's fault. Really. They scapegoat the scientists who heralded the new future because they cannot find those who witnessed it in its actuality. Is it his fault? Yes, partly. Is it Noel's? His as well. The Academy was the vehicle of their ideals, not the other way around.

He would gladly take the blame. Probably. Except he's not completely ready to be crucified just yet.

There's still a way to fix this. He merely needs to find it.

It is a pain to relocate from one abandoned building to the next. He wishes it didn't have to be like this. Knows he has only his own wits to rely on, now. There is no cavalry waiting in the wings of the time that exists only in fragments and stops and starts and unintelligible circles.

His life is on perpetual freeze-frame. These are an eternity of lost moments that can never be reclaimed. He is sure he would not want to keep them, anyway.

The fear is all too familiar.

It is sixty-three years, five weeks, and four days before Noel finds him again. Bursts through the window with just enough warning that he can dive behind a couch for cover, and pray to whatever deity might be out there, watching this broken world for their own amusement, that he will just give up and go away.

They were friends, once. He watches the memory like an old film, and is not surprised when it slips off-track.

He has no use for could-have-beens.

It is an eternity and a moment before the intruder moves. He slumps, as if disappointed to see what he is seeing. Is unstrung like a lonely marionette.

His voice is as broken as their reality. "Hope," he rasps. Looks around the cheap, desolate room. The lodgings are not impressive. He knows this. Prefers it because of that fact.

He hardly deserves opulence.

"Are you here?"

The dead air consumes the sound. He frowns.

Does not notice the old laptop whirring away in the corner. Except its exhaust fan speeds up to double-time, which it is prone to doing. The thing is a piece of junk, but it is all he could have found in this damnable city of shadows.

Noel notes it. Knows that his prey is not one to leave his technology simply idling.

"Hope, please," he tries again. The pleading in his tone makes his heart wrench.

He just won't go away.

They were friends, once. It is because of this that he stands, gives up his hiding place.

"You," they both say, and leave it at that.

* * *

Five hundred years is a long time to experience fully. They have both seen its effects, but neither has lived through every day, every hour, every second of that time.

If this can be considered living. He hesitates to allow the label to be applied to this twilight realm, a bastard fusion of Valhalla and the mortal realm.

Noel takes the mantle of Shadowhunter. Does not tell Hope what this means, though the queries come quick and often.

They were friends, once. No longer. They merely tolerate each other, can count on the other in a time of need.

He quarantines himself in the desert. Constructs his version of an impenetrable fortress.

There are only a few ways he can attempt to make a difference. It is difficult being hunted when he is as ordinary as the rest of them.

It takes almost two hundred years to get the supercomputer how he wants it. The underground bunker is somewhat distant from society, and leaving it is a chore. The sun is harsh to his pale skin, but gentle to his need for isolation and protection. The sand is a natural barrier. The moat to his castle.

He wishes for Alexander. Doesn't know how the Eidolon would help him in his predicament, but would comfort in his presence all the same.

It is by gathering information that he begins to find some purpose in life again. Research is who he is and what he does. Science and facts keep him warm in a way the ambient heat of the parched, unfamiliar land around him does not.

There is something else that keeps him warm. Grounded. That something is a fragment of what might have been happiness, once.

They sit together sometimes. Give up the world for a day at a time, this nightmare that someone, somewhere (was it him?) might have christened Nova Chrysalia.

Damn if he can remember anymore.

It exists in moments that they dare not speak or even think about, a mutual need that hides in shadows and shuns the half-light that this half-life provides.

Little is said, much less is communicated. However, Noel knows for certain that there will always be a couch open to him - one safe haven left in this wretched place.

* * *

Hope spends most of his time at his cobbled-together computer, now. Noel is his only source of knowledge of the outside world; or rather, was, if time holds any meaning anymore. With the Shadowhunter's help he now has eyes on the surface, especially in Luxerion.

No one goes looking for him. Not after all this time. Four hundred and eighty years is a long enough period to stay dormant - long enough that any errant thought of the ex-l'Cie who hop-skip-jumped through the future and damned them all is suffocated under more important matters, like the visible decay of this realm.

It isn't long before they will all run out of this borrowed time of theirs. It comes too soon, and yet not soon enough.

* * *

Four hundred and ninety nine years, three hundred and fifty days after the world ended, the cult surfaces. Hope observes from a safe distance as they kill in the name of Etro, a long-dead goddess that all hold contempt for in this new world.

He is not sure how he feels about this. On the one hand, because of her, he is not a crystal - he is breathing, existing, and able to manipulate the world around him, unlike those of his friends he thinks might still be trapped in shimmering rock. (Of course, he isn't sure. If he thought ten years was a long time, when he was a younger man, he would have paled knowing that he would spend an agonizing five hundred years without a single hair or clue as to their whereabouts.)

On the other, it is because of her that Serah is dead. Lightning is still missing, presumably dead as well; this Noel likes to tell him, and sometimes, when he is desperate, he is inclined to agree. But something in him tells him otherwise - knows that a world that truly is missing its Light would feel a lot different than this one.

So he watches. Impassively. Decides he owes nothing to this goddess, not anymore, not after what she took in just repayment for the gift of his continued life.

His dreams are alien to him. Full of half-formed phantasms made of dust and shadow and bits of crystal sand, that look like soldiers sometimes and Barthandelus others. Perhaps that is the man who had been named Caius, peering at him through the cracks also - he is not sure, having glimpsed the man for only a moment five centuries but a second ago, in air above a chaos-infested Academia. He looks like Fang, sometimes, his subconscious drawing parallels between their Eidolons and filling in the gaps besides.

He dreams of his family, also. And his friends, and a mysterious blonde girl who he thinks he recognizes but then doesn't. The shadows that Noel supposedly fights make their appearance as well, given form by his own silent fears.

Then there is fire and screams and his mother is falling beyond his reach yet again, and the pain is too too raw too sharp for a thousand years (has it really been that long? Yes, it has) and he is fourteen and desperate and so very alone all over again and this really. Really needs to stop. Because he is one thousand and twenty seven years old, chronologically, and there are some hurts that remain impossibly fresh when they shouldn't.

How paradoxical, a part of him says in ironic despair.

These are the dreams of a sick man, as sick as this world and growing more ill as each second passes and doesn't pass.

* * *

He has been rounding up. The five hundredth year exactly, there is a disturbance on one of his cameras. One goes immediately to static, will not come back online no matter what he tries. He suspects someone or something damaged the casing or a cord, whether on purpose or on accident.

There is movement on the camera that rests three blocks away, trained on the station entrance in Luxerion. He snaps to, obediently, like a trained dog - fingers, ungloved, fly over the keyboard as he keys in a command to zoom and enhance the feed.

Something. There. That form - it is gone before he can glimpse it proper, and so he switches to the next camera, two hundred meters away. Preemptively sharpens the footage. Waits, waits -

There, the sleeve of someone moving almost off screen.

He does not recognize the garb - feels almost guilty for hyperanalyzing the detail, before remembering that there are still a few people who may or may not be out to kill him, and his concern is warranted.

The figure zips across the screen, and the camera bursts into static. He knows it is not an accident.

Sits back in his chair, heaving a sigh that is relief and frustration and longing and hope and resentment all at once.

Recognizes that flash of blush-pink hair, arcing across the footage like lightning. Like Lightning.

It is not like him to forget when Noel is here and when he is not. Stirs awkwardly as strong arms wrap around his torso from behind. (Long since gave up his crusade against physical proximity, almost two hundred years ago - it is who the Shadowhunter is, he knows, and he selfishly welcomes it for his own needs as well.)

"Something wrong?" he asks. Smooth as velvet and rough as sandpaper. Notes the two static windows in the middle of the left hand side of his collection of monitors.

"Lost two cameras," he responds, avoiding the topic of what else he had seen. Is not sure he is ready to share that knowledge yet. Is not sure anyone else is ready to take it.

Five hundred - no, a thousand years it has been since he had last seen Lightning in person. He trusts blindly, but knows the depths of Noel's pain.

They are similar and yet so different.

"I'll go check on them," the man who was once his friend says, pulling away and vanishing before Hope can argue.

He stares after him for a moment, wondering wordlessly.

Keys in another series of commands, observing his workstation with eyes tired and bright.

Hopes he is not dreaming. Doesn't think he could handle waking up, if he is.

Knows that their last chance has just resurfaced. The last chance that none of them deserve, but will gladly take.

And so he begins a hunt of his own.


End file.
